Wednesday, July 4, 2007

Fireworks

Rather than drive to a far off place to get fireworks of any great quality, we sat in our culdesac and watched fireworks that were just over our house. Very beautiful.

July Vacation Luray Cavern

Wednesday, the fourth of July we went to Luray Caverns. We really loved all the rock formations. The depest below the earth we were was 160'. It was very nice and we have hundreds of pictures to pick through to identify the ones that turned out best. There is an antique car show that is attached to the facility and admission to the caves includes admission into the cars. They are almost all cars from the 1920s and before and all are in mint condition. They were beautiful.


July Vacation Monticello



One Tuesday morning we drove to Charlottesville and visited Monticello, the retirement home of Thomas Jefferson. We sure are learning a lot of history and seeing a lot of beatiful countryside. Pretty cool to visit the home of the author of the declaration of independance on the day before the 231 anniversary of its publication. His home is a marvel in many ways. The tour guide was very informative. It turns out, however, that the teens and youth were a lot less interested in it and the information about how the grounds were maintained and the quarters of the enslaved than the parents. We went to the university of Virginia to see a specific building that he designed. Thomas Jefferson counts his organization, creation and design of the Universtity among the three most important accomplishments of his life. The campus is beautiful and it turns out to be a very prestigious university. They have a medical school, busines school and law school. Tuition is pretty high but when our daughters are ready, we'll be instate tuition eligible and maybe they can get scholarships.






July Vacation Baltimore

On Monday morning we got up pretty early and went to the Inner Harbor at Baltimore and spent much of the day in the Baltimore aquarium. We also enjoyed the dolphin show. The aquarium was packed but all the kids seemed to like it very much. Besides the sea life they have a large rain forest display and an Australia display. I recommend it very highly. Baltimore has a beautiful skyline and the town is really done up nicely for tourism. We'd brought food with us that we ate in the parking garage. That was a little wierd but not unpleasant. Willy's heart was set on seeing dolphins and he also saw almost all the kinds of sharks he knew about. That was very neat.

July Vacation

What a week we've had. The girls went to Girl's camp last week and had a fantastic time in Prince William forest. Saturday, June 29th we went to Virginia beach and had a great time. It took us longer than we expected to get there but the kids played in the ocean for 4 hours and had a wonderful time letting the ocean waves push them around. Jessica found some hermit crabs and Willy thinks he saw a ray swimming near his feet. The day was beautifu and couldn't have been better. Even though the baby got lathered up with Sunscreen noone else did. We all had pretty red faces and arms for a few days... As you can see we didn't come very prepared for the beach but had a very nice time.